Using Box Trapper Effectively and Efficiently

It is claimed that Box Trapper - which is a White List verification system - uses too much system resources and clogs the Interet with verification requests for boat loads of spam.

I have Box Trapper setup so that it is effective and not wasteful. What I did is set Spam Assassin to delete most of the spam before Box Trapper ever sees it.

Here are detailed instructions on how to do this.

1. Set your default email address to :blackhole: It is claimed that :fail: requires less resources on your system. But, responding to non-existent addresses at your domain only encourages spammers and increases traffic on the Internet. So, use :blackhole: to simply get rid of fake address spam.

2. Set spam assassin to delete spam that exceeds the threshold score that you set. Set this number just high enough that no false positives occur. At the moment, I have mine set to 10. I may lower it as I see what gets through and monitor the scores. The idea is to let as little spam pass as possible without identifying good email as spam. IMPORTANT: When I set Spam Assassin to delet spam, it set a filter to delete the spam. But, unfortunately, the filter it created didn't work. So, be sure to turn spam assassin on first and make sure that it actually deletes the spam before you go to the next step.

3. Turn Box Trapper on. Spam Assassin processes email before Box Trapper. So, if you set spam assassin to delete spam, Box Trapper never sees it and so Box Trapper only sends verification to email that has passed through the Spam Assassin filter and not been deleted.

IMPORTANT: Do not allow Spam Assassin to tag the spam and then deliver it to you. If you do that, Box Trapper will send a verification to every spam email received. Spam Assassin must be set to delete the email.

1. Set your default email address to :blackhole: It is claimed that :fail: requires less resources on your system. But, responding to non-existent addresses at your domain only encourages spammers and increases traffic on the Internet. So, use :blackhole: to simply get rid of fake address spam.

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You're dreaming if you beleive accepting email to nonexistent users is more secure than rejecting it. The spammers will just continue to send to those addresses which can quite literally consume huge amounts of resources on machine - yes, I've seen it happen. Trust me, fail is the way to go.

That said, I quite like the boxtrapper idea - it's really the only way to stop all spam getting through. Not that I'd use it myself!